The Melting Pot aims to address a double-problem that is growing in urban centers like Zürich: increasing loneliness and increasing food waste. Through partnerships with local GZ and food-saving organizations, we aim to create an event for local residents from all social classes to gather around a tavolata of saved foods. As a group we will cook saved ingredients ,which might be surplus foods from restaurants or groceries from supermarkets that may have just passed their “best before” date but are still safe to consume. In brief, these are the first two pillars of our event format: Cook and Eat. We also intend to provide a third pillar: Experience. The experience will vary from event to event, but may include games, a sing-along performance, entertainment for younger guests to give their parents time to mingle. Each event will include hands on education about food wastee.g., where to save food using services like Madame Frigo - services that can used to drop off food before holiday or pick food up before going to the supermarket to avoid waste, or a cooking class that uses often discarded parts of food like “carrot-top pesto” or “parmesan-rind meatballs”. An ideal outcome of this project would be that participants leave our dinners feeling a sense of empowerment around food, feeling excited to reduce food waste and share food around their neighborhoods, and having met new familiar faces they might bump into on their next food-saving expedition. We are currently actively looking for partners to bring this vision to life, including the physical location in Zürich where we could hold these events.

Melting Pot

Org chart

Teams

Offices